I like to watch. There’s something compulsively enjoyable about trying to figure out the outcome of some dramatic process, and while politics isn’t everybody’s cup of tea, I personally find elections to be gripping. And then of course there’s the whole caring about the outcome business. Substantive concern and compulsion drive us to find our campaign metrics where we may and wonder, wonder about the outcome. Will we have another four to eight years of Republican authoritarianism? Are we destined for corporate Democraticity? Or is there an insurgent candidate waiting in the wings?
We’ve been looking at sales statistics for items supporting the 2008 presidential contenders since way back in 2004, but lately we’ve started looking at indicators of traffic to campaign websites, Google News mentions, and even a google idiot index.
Then there is the number of MySpace friends brandished by each candidate on that flashy, seizure-inducing internet behemoth. To whom do social networkers pledge their political allegiance? Here are the MySpace rankings for candidates of each party (and no party) bridging two dates, starting on September 16, 2007 and ending up on September 25, 2007:
| 9/16/2007 | 9/25/2007 | Change | |
| Democrats | |||
| Joseph Biden: | 14,150 friends | 14,255 friends | (105 new friends) |
| Hillary Clinton: | 56,089 friends | 56,242 friends | (153 new friends) |
| Christopher Dodd: | 8,787 friends | 8,747 friends | (40 new friends) |
| John Edwards: | 47,043 friends | 47,085 friends | (42 new friends) |
| Mike Gravel: | 9,807 friends | 9,965 friends | (158 new friends) |
| Dennis Kucinich: | 31,229 friends | 31,360 friends | (131 new friends) |
| Barack Obama: | 175,259 friends | 177,548 friends | (2,289 new friends) |
| Bill Richardson: | 20,575 friends | 20,390 friends | (185 fewer friends) |
| Independents | |||
| Orion Karl Daley: | no myspace page | no myspace page | (no new friends) |
| Kelcey Wilson: | 63 friends | 63 friends | (no new friends) |
| Greens | |||
| Jared Ball: | 22 friends | 28 friends | (6 new friends) |
| Jerry Kann: | no myspace page | no myspace page | (no new friends) |
| Kent Mesplay: | no myspace page | no myspace page | (no new friends) |
| Joe Schriner: | no myspace page | no myspace page | (no new friends) |
| kat swift: | 117 friends | 119 friends | (2 new friends) |
| Republicans | |||
| Sam Brownback: | 2604 friends | 11,018 friends | (8,414 new friends) |
| Rudolph Giuliani: | 7509 friends | 8,170 friends | (661 new friends) |
| Mike Huckabee: | 4389 friends | 7,264 friends | (2,875 new friends) |
| Duncan Hunter: | 2144 friends | 6,805 friends | (4,661 new friends) |
| Alan Keyes: | 277 friends | 274 friends | (3 fewer friends) |
| John McCain: | 7655 friends | 36,366 friends | (28,711 new friends) |
| Ron Paul: | 62503 friends | 64,280 friends | (1,777 new friends) |
| Mitt Romney: | 11926 friends | 30,417 friends | (18,491 new friends) |
| Tom Tancredo: | 849 friends | 4,019 friends | (3,170 new friends) |
| Fred Thompson: | 8844 friends | 9,569 friends | (725 new friends) |
On the down side of things, Bill Richardson and Alan Keyes have the dubious distinction of being the only presidential candidates to have a net loss of MySpace over the past nine days. Barack Obama is still the most popular candidate on MySpace, and overall the Democrats are more popular than the Republicans, but the Republicans gained more new friends this week, coming closer to Democratic levels of friends.
We’ll take a look at the MySpace pages again after another week’s time and see who’s trending up and down.
[Erratum: someone leaving a helpful note says that the numbers from 9/16 on McCain and Romney were lower than actual for some reason. I saved copies of the pages, and doublechecking them they are correct for those pages for the time, which means that there was some reporting issue on MySpace's end last week. In the future, I'll check the day before and after as well to ensure that MySpace is reporting consistently.]
According to this chart at TechPresident.com (http://www.techpresident.com/scrape_plot/myspace) McCain has had between 30,000 and 40,000 myspace friends since April, and has been relatively stagnant in attracting new friends. Ron Paul’s population of myspace friends continues a strong growth pattern, as the chart demonstrates.
You are similarly mistaken about Romney’s myspace numbers. The same chart indicates he has had about 30,000 myspace friends since early July.
Thanks for this information. I collect the MySpace numbers directly myself, and save the pages at the time, which show my numbers were right when I collected them — which indicates that there was a glitch last week in MySpace’s reporting on those pages. This is odd and important to know. In the future, I’ll look at the MySpace pages a day before and a day after the target date to make sure that there are not temporary reporting errors of this sort on MySpace.